Regardless of your opinion of the Workhouse, or more properly called the Medium Security Institution, it is being demolished, and I thought I would swing by and take a look at the site.
I had never actually stopped before, and really, driving along Hall Street, I’m generally looking out for maniac drivers around me so never really glanced out my car window as I went by.
There’s lots razor wire, tall weeds and half demolished buildings. I don’t know what the land can be used for, as the use of land on nearby parcels is pretty low intensity already. I don’t expect Mercedes Benz or Rivian to build an auto plant on Hall Street any time soon.
And no mention of the Workhouse would be complete without mentioning the previous one on South Broadway, which is still hard to believe was being used after World War II! It looked like something out of a Charles Dickens novel, and it makes sense why the one being demolished now was built.
I also wrote an article about it at St. Louis Magazine, which you can read here.
It will be gone soon, and for the first time since the early Nineteenth Century, the City of St. Louis will be without a building named the Workhouse.
Your last sentence says it all. So many of these places are not just about architectural design, they’re about history. Once they’re gone there’s no physical presence, no evidence of the building of this country. We’re left with abandoned strip malls to remind us of the previous 3 or 4 decades, short term memory only. We abandon opportunities for curiosity and replace them with mediocrity. So sad. This is America’s values.